Did Cipro or another Fluoroquinolone Antibiotic change your life? It did mine…

Good days and bad days…

So many of our friends and relatives call and ask “How’s Joe?” And the answer is always “Well, he has good days and bad days. Today is a …”

Well, today is a good day. He is actually feeling pretty good today and that always makes me feel better. Hah! Today is actually a “bad” day for me since I feel like a cold is about to catch up to me. Must eat more grapefruit.

The past several days have been the same pattern for Joe – good day/bad day. A lot has to do with the weather – we live in the Midwest and currently have about 8 inches of snow on the ground and have just today crept up to 32 degrees F. There’s nothing like a below-0 temperature outside to make your everything hurt.

So I asked him today what he’d done differently that made him have more energy and less pain. Aside from just consciously keeping himself calm – by that I mean cut the stress at the start and not let the stressful reaction take hold – he has been “working” his meds.

Joe is on 20 mg Oxycontin (twice daily as needed), 10/500 Hydrocodone (up to 2, 4 times daily as needed), and 1200 mg Gabapentin daily (400 mg 3 times daily). These are the drugs that are most effective for his pain. Lately he has been spacing them out over the morning: Oxy early – around 6:00 a.m., then the Gabapentin along with his other drugs around 8:00 or 9:00 a.m., and then an hour or so later a Hydro if he needs it. This has been working quite well. Previously he was just not really paying attention to what was working when. We knew they all made a difference – he simply cannot go without any of them. What is interesting though, is that the Gabapentin is probably as critical to his pain control as the Oxy. He found this out the hard way recently because he ran out and since they aren’t “known” as pain killers, he figured he could wait a day or so to get them – well the day ran into four days and finally when he got back on the Gabapentin, he realized how much help the drug really was.

Good to know that there are good drugs — ya know.

He is monitoring this all much more closely but he may well have found the right mix. This is not to say that he no longer has pain – he does – what it does mean is that he can control it and not be loopy because of the amount of hydrocodone in his system. Yay. Maybe the days of his sitting here and snoozing for 4-6 hours are past.

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Hello,
Great Blog! Thanks for helping to get awareness of this issue out. I was poisoned by Cipro on 3-1-10… it’s coming up to one year of hell for me! We must keep moving forward and try to heal… I have seen recoveries, but they take years. Your blog has inspired me to start one to. If you haven’t already, join the fluoroquinolone groups on facebook… I think they are really increasing awareness of this issue quickly. I’ve seen the number of floxies on that group go up by over 100 in just the last couple months! This is sad because so many have been hurt, but good that we’re banding together and raising awareness. I hope that we will at least prevent others from having their lives destroyed.
-Greg

Hi Greg! Thanks for your kind words. It is sad that so many have been hurt but with the growing number of blogs — I was inspired to do this by reading John Fratti’s blog — and of course the Facebook page — perhaps we’ll bring the awareness needed to prevent further pain. Thanks for bringing up the Facebook page here — it serves me as a reminder to add a link!! When you start your blog please let me know so I can add a link to you! Best, Jean